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Esmeralda Santiago in the Marketplace of Identity Politics AcostaCruz(v2).qxd 7/15/06 3:21 PM Page 170 CENTRO Journal Volume7 xv1ii Number 1 spring 2006 Esmeralda Santiago in the marketplace of identity politics MA R Í A AC O S TA CRU Z A B S T R A C T Esmeralda Santiag o ’s América’s Dream, with its ahistorical subjectivism and idealization of an agrarian past, offers a “Latino” docile Puerto Rican as the nov e l ’s central protagonist. This article explores the following: the m a r ketability of Latinos, Puerto Rican lite r a r y histo r y, and identity formation. Santiag o ’s nostalgia positions her ideologically within 1 9 3 0 s–1950s Puerto Rican writing. Santiag o ’s “te r ruño” presents a narrative model (exclusively working class characters, binary gender roles, an agrarian setting, a disconnection from co n te m p o r a ry culture) that reinvents the ste r e o t ype of the docile Puerto Rican. América’s Dream offers no interplay of hybridity—one of the defining characteristics of Latino, and Puerto Rican identities. [Key words: Latino identities, d o c i l i t y, authenticity, market politics, ste r e o t yp e s ] [ 171 ] AcostaCruz(v2).qxd 7/15/06 3:21 PM Page 172 “Desde el fabuloso “retorno a la tierra’ de La workers and their interaction with people in other spheres of life; for example c a r re t a, […] la añoranza e idealización de la (teacher’s assistant) Tere Avila’s partnership with (over-educated and ambitious accountant) Irma Granados in Loving Pedro Infante. sociedad agraria patriarcal de La víspera del I contend that in the marketing of Puerto Rican identity Santiago is what Renato h o m b re, hasta el subjetivismo ahistórico de Rosaldo called the “Lone Ethnographer” (31), i.e., someone who offers an “objective” ‘El puertorriqueño dócil’ y La mirada, la […] obra de overview of a culture as a homogeneous, unchanging monument. What gives one René Marqués constituye la […] búsqueda de un pause is the anthropological reading encouraged by the publicity surrounding her ‘tiempo perdido’ e irrecuperable en definitiva por work: the reader is supposed to approach her “authentic” descriptions of Puerto Rico as if they were ethnographies. Some academic critics also support this view, for medio de la nostalgia militante.” (González 1989: 84) example Rodríguez Vechinni refers to her work as “ethnografic autobiography” (174). As Lori Ween explains: “the appearance of authenticity and the belief in the truth This epigraph from José Luis González about René Marqués could apply of a created image are vital and are manufactured to create a bond of trust with the to Esmeralda Santiago, whose oeuvre takes the traits of ahistorical audience” (92). The culture industry ensures the reception of Santiago’s Puerto Rico as “authentic” because it is taken as grounded in autobiography, which is already a subjectivism, nostalgia, and idealization of an agrarian past, into the problematic viewpoint for identitary projects. Her strategy relies to a great extent Latino context and gives a new face to a well-known über-Latino on authority of experience as the source of cultural and historical information stereotype: the docile Puerto Rican. The high visibility of her work pertaining to Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans with little or no references to other makes for a repetition and reinvention of some of the most troubling sources of authority. This means that Santiago is, in essence, true to herself. stereotypes about Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rico. However, even a cursory glance at the paratextual (ancillary) material that promote Santiago’s works—such as web pages, reviews, jacket art, interviews, etc.—shows the stress laid on the authenticity of the works’ Puerto Rican and Latino experience. The marketplace Cynical as it may seem, can we ignore in our reception of Santiago the commercial S a n t i ago is a prominent member of the Latina boom in Un i ted States publishing hype of, say, the web pages devoted to her life and work?4 A publicity machine that of the 1990s.1 Common to their work (and that of their male co u n te r p a rts) is the promotes readings of her version of Puerto Ricans as ethnically “real” bypasses exploration of Latino identities. It is important to weigh the significance of a Latina notions of accountability to historical facts and actually promotes a product that being her own cultural agent and representing her wo r l d v i ew on her own terms. woefully disregards Puerto Rican complexities. Yet it is equally important to remember the part Santiago plays in the cultural Critics have pointed out the centrality of Puerto Rican identity in her work. p h e n o m e n o n of the U. S. “ethnic identities” market. Top Latina writers such as Aileen Schmidt affirms, “The problem of identity is the cornerstone of the S a n t i ago, Sandra Cisneros, Denise Chávez, Julia Alvarez, and Cristina Garcia have their narration” (136). Carmen L. Torres-Robles sees that cornerstone as tied to her works published by major houses, and are rewarded with lite r a r y prizes; and sometimes puertorriqueñidad: “Su sentido de identidad nunca se ve amenazado con la influencia their works are made into movies, thereby institutionalizing them into canon-forming de la cultura norteamericana” (210). Keith Alan Sprouse restates this by saying that, cultural products. Ma r ket forces turn their works into commodities that speak to the in her memoirs, “although she claims to have once wanted to be North American, vogue for all things Latino in co n te m p o r a ry U. S. culture. Santiago is a star in that in the final instance, when she speaks of her island, her people, and her language, m a r ke t—proof is the PBS presentation of Almost a Wo m a n.2 She is not a disenfr a n c h i s e d she refers only to Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans, and Spanish, finding no place for homegirl from the barrio. Her cultural clout is shown by the frequency with which her North America, North Americans, or English” (115). But he does not delve into texts appear in high school and co ll e g e - l evel readers and textbooks, proof of the acce s s what kind of “Puerto Rico” is at issue in her works. she has to the means of cultural production. She is visibly located at the ce n ter of a culture industry that thrives on representations of “Latinoness.” The problematics of authenticity For an author who came to prominence in the 1990s, it is striking how she deals On a theoretical level Cervenak and colleagues state that “the very discursive in a kind of identity formation. For the most part her texts ignore alte rn a te forms of practice of ‘authority of experience’ replicates, however oppositionally, the politics P u e rto Rican experience and values— e x cept for her own—rendering a uniform identity of state domination” (351). So if we set aside the belief in primacy of experience and that conforms to ste r e o t ypical expectations of a “ce rt a i n” kind of Puerto Rican: i.e., focus on the culture represented in her works, Santiago’s rendering of Puerto Rico— u n e d u c a ted and wo r k i n g - c l ass. Ellen Mc Cr a ken calls this kind of cultural production taken as gospel truth by so many readers in the States because it “flows” from “ s u c cessful ‘minority commodities,’ versions of the Latino Other that mainstream autobiographical expertise—is seen to be far removed from historical and cultural publishing companies authorize, market, and even, to some degree, foment” (5). Puerto Rican reality. It amounts to authenticity by implication. The working-class has rightfully occupied the lion’s share of Latino literature Sa n t i ag o ’s oeuvre should be identified with what José Luis González labeled j i ba r i s m o because great numbers of Latinos in the United States are from the working-class. l i t e ra r i o (González 1989: 37), by which he meant the mythification of the small town Puerto Yet Santiago’s works present “Puerto Ricans” as synonymous only with members of Rican peasant. The cultural appeal of this presentation of Puerto Ricans is exemplified by the working class.3 Compare for example Denise Chávez’s focus on “service” industry the long-held popularity of Rafael He rn á n d e z ’s 1929 song “Lamento Borincano” [ 172 ] [ 173 ] AcostaCruz(v2).qxd 7/15/06 3:21 PM Page 174 ( “ Y t r i s te, el jibarito va / pensando así, diciendo así / llorando así por el caminooooo”). through the prism of romantic nostalgia, a telluric imaginary that has stood her well The impact (through massive marketing and exposure) of that vision, in the in the marketplace. Her texts stage a Macondoized5 Puerto Rico, which in this novel context of a Latino search for roots, is that Puerto Rico is perpetuated for, say, is set in Vieques, thus telescoping the insularity to an island off the coast of an island. great numbers of high school and college students in the U.S., as a 1950s agrarian Early in the novel there is a telling description of Vieques: lost land.
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